Category Archives: vExpert

While I was at Zettagrid I was lucky enough to have access to a couple of lab environments that where sourced from retired production components and I was able to build up a lab that could satisfy the requirements of R&D, Operations and the Development team. By the time I left Zettagrid we had a lab that most people envied and I took advantage of it in terms of having a number of NestedESXi instances to use as my own lab instances but also, we had an environment that ensured new products could be developed without impacting production while having multiple layers of NestedESXi instances to test new builds and betas.

With me leaving Zettagrid for Veeam, I lost access to the lab and even though I would have access to a nice shiny new lab within Veeam I thought it was time to bite the bullet and go about sourcing a homelab of my own. The main reasons for this was to have something local that I could tinker with which would allow me to continue playing with the VMware vCloud suite as well as continue to look out for new products allowing me to engage and continue to create content.

What I Wanted:

For me, my requirements where simple; I needed a server that was powerful enough to run at least two NestedESXi lab stacks, which meant 128GB of RAM and enough CPU cores to handle approx. twenty to thirty VMs. At the same time I needed to not not blow the budget and spend thousands upon thousands, lastly I needed to make sure that the power bill was not going to spiral out of control…as a supplementary requirement, I didn’t want a noisy beast in my home office. I also wasn’t concerned with any external networking gear as everything would be self contained in the NestedESXi virtual switching layer.

What I Got:

To be honest, the search didn’t take that long mainly thanks to a couple of Homelab Channels that I am a member of in the vExpert and Homelabs-AU Slack Groups. Given my requirements it quickly came down to the SYS-5028D-TN4T Xeon D-1541 Mini-tower or the SYS-5028D-TN4T-12C Xeon D-1567 Mini-tower. Paul Braren at TinkerTry goes through in depth why the Xeon D processors in these SuperMicro Super Servers are so well suited to homelabs so I won’t repeat what’s been written already but for me the combination of a low power CPU (45w) that still has either 8 or 12 cores that’s packaged up in such a small form factor meant that my only issue was trying to find a supplier that would ship the unit to Australia for a reasonable price.

Digicor came to the party and I was able to source a great deal with Krishnan from their Perth office. There are not too many SuperMicro dealers in Australia, and there was a lot of risk in getting the gear shipped from the USA or Europe and the cost of shipping plus import duties meant that going local was the only option. For those that are in Australia, looking for SuperMicro Homelab gear, please email/DM me and I can get you in touch with the guys at Digicor.

What’s Inside:

I decided to go for the 8 core CPU mainly because I knew that my physical to virtual CPU ratio wasn’t going to exceed the processing power that it had to offer and as mentioned I went straight to 128GB of RAM to ensure I could squeeze a couple of NestedESXi instances on the host.

In addition to what comes with the Super Server bundle I purchased 2x Samsung EVO 850 512GB SSDs for initial primary storage and also got the SanDisk Ultra Fit CZ43 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive to install ESXi onto as well as a 128GB Flash Drive for extra storage.

Unboxing Pics:

Small package, that hardly weighs anything…not surprising given the size of the case.

Nicely packaged on the inside.

Came with a US and AU kettle cord which was great.

The RAM came separately boxed and well wrapped in anti-static bags.

You can see a size comparison with my 13″ MBP in the background.

The back is all fan, but that doesn’t mean this is a loud system. In fact I can barely hear it purring in the background as I sit and type less than a meter away from it.

One great feature is the IPMI Remote Management which is a brilliant and convenient edition for a HomeLab server…the network port is seen top left. On the right are the 2x10Gig and 2x1Gig network ports.

The X10SDV-TLN4Fmotherboard is well suited to this case and you can see how low profile the CPU fan is.

Installing the RAM wasn’t too difficult even through there isn’t a lot of room to work with inside the case.

Finally, taking a look at the HotSwap drive bays…I had to buy a 3.5 to 2.5 inch adapter to fit in the SSDs, however I did find that the lock in ports could hold the weight of the EVO’s with ease.

BIOS and Initialization’s boot screens

Overall First Thoughts:

This is a brilliant bit of kit and it’s perfect for anyone wanting to do NestedESXi at home without worrying about the RAM limits of NUCs or the noise and power draw of more traditional servers like the R710’s that seem to make their way out of datacenters and into homelabs. The 128GB of RAM means that unless you really want to go fully physical you should be able to nest most products and keep everything nicely contained within the ESXi Host compute, storage and networking.

Thanks again to Krishnan at Digicor for supplying the equipment and to Paul Braren for all the hard work he does up at TinkerTry. Special mention also to my work colleague, Michael White who was able to give me first hand experience of the Super Servers and help make it a no brainer to get the 5028D-TNT4.

I’ll follow this post up with a more detailed a look at how I went about installing ESXi and how the NestedESXi labs look like and what sort of performance I’m getting out the the system.

More 5028D Goodness:

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Last week after an extended period of development and beta testing VMware released vSphere 6.5. This is a lot more than a point release and is a major major upgrade from vSphere 6.0. In fact, there is so much packed into this new release that there is an official whitepaper listing all the features and enhancements that had been linked from the release notes. I thought I would go through some of the key features and enhancements that are included in the latest versions of vCenter and ESXi and as per usual I’ll go through those improvements that relate back to the Service Providers that use vSphere as the foundation of their Managed or Infrastructure as a Service offerings.

Generally the “whats new” would fit into one post, however having gotten through just the vCenter features it became apparent that this would have to be a multi-post series…this is great news for vCloud Air Network Service Providers out there as it means there is a lot packed in for IaaS and MSPs to take advantage of.

With that, in this post will cover the following:

vCenter 6.5 New Features

vCD and NSX Compatibility

Current Known Issues

vCenter 6.5 New Features:

Without question the enhancements to the VCSA stand out as one of the biggest features of 6.5 and as mentioned in the whitepaper, the installer process has been overhauled and is a much smoother, streamlined experience than with previous versions. It’s also supported across more operating systems and the 6.5 version of vCenter now surpasses the Windows version offering the migration tool, native high availability and built in backup and restore. One interesting sidenote to the new VCSA is that the HTML5 vSphere Client has shipped, though it’s still very much a work in progress as a lot of unsupported functionality mentioned in the release notes…there is lots of work to do to bring it up to parity with the Flex Web Client.

In terms of the inbuilt PostGreSQL database I think it’s time that Service Providers feel confident in making the switch away from MSSQL (which was the norm with Windows based vCenters) as the enhanced VCSA Management Interface (found on port 5480) has a new monitoring screen showing information relating to disk space usage and also provides a way to gracefully start and stop the database engine.

Other vCenter enhancements that Service Providers will make use of is the High availability feature which is something a lot of people have been asking for a long time. For me, I always dealt with the no HA constraint in that vCenter may become unavailable for 5-10 minutes during maintenance or at worse an extended outage while recovering from a VM or OS level failure. Knowing that hosts and VMs are still working and responding with vCenter down leaving only core management functionality unavailable it was a risk myself and others were willing to take. However, in this day of the always on datacenter it’s expected that management functionality be as available at IaaS services…so with that, this HA feature is well welcomed for Service Providers.

This native HA solution is available exclusively for the VCSA and the solution consists of active, passive, and witness nodes that are cloned from the existing vCenter Server instance. The HA cluster can be enabled, disabled, or destroyed at any time. There is also a maintenance mode that prevents planned maintenance from causing an unwanted failover.

The VCSA Migration Tool that was previously released in 6.0 Update 2m is shipped in the VCSA ISO and can be used to migrate from Windows based 5.5 vCenter’s to the 6.5 VCSA. Again this is something that more and more service providers will take advantage of as the reliance on Windows based vCenters and MSSQL becomes more and more something that’s unwanted from a manageability and cost point of view. Throw in the enhanced features that have only been released for the VCSA and this is a migration that all service providers should be planning.

To complete the move away from any Windows based dependencies the vSphere Update Manager has also been fully integrated into the VCSA. VUM is now fully integrated into the Web Client UI and is enabled by default. For larger environments with a large numbers of hosts AutoDeploy is now fully manageable from the VCSA UI and doesn’t require PowerCLI to manage or configure it’s options. There is a new image builder included in the UI that can hit local or public repositories to pull images or drivers and there are performance enhancements during deployments of ESXi images to hosts.

vCD and NSX Compatibility:

Shifting from new features and enhancements to an important subject to talk about when talking service provider platform…VMware product compatibility. For those vCAN Service Providers running a Hybrid Cloud you should be running a combination of vCloud Director SP or/and NSX-v of which, at the moment there is no support for either in vSphere 6.5. No compatible versions of NSX are available for vSphere 6.5. If you attempt to prepare your vSphere 6.5 hosts with NSX 6.2.x, you receive an error message and cannot proceed.

I haven’t tested to see if vCloud Director SP will connect and interact with vCenter 6.5 or ESXi 6.5 however as it’s not supported I wouldn’t suggest upgrading production IaaS platforms until the interoperability matrix’s are updated.

At this stage there is no word on when either product will support vSphere 6.5 but I suspect we will see NSX-v come out with a supported build shortly…though I’m expecting vCloud Director SP to no support 6.5 until the next major version release, which is looking like the new year.

Installation and Upgrade Known Issues:

Having read through the release notes, there are also a number of known issues you should be aware of. I’ve gone through those and pulled the ones I consider the most likely to be impactful to IaaS platforms.

After upgrading to vCenter Server 6.5, the ESXi hosts in High Availability clusters appear as Not Ready in the VMware NSX UI
If your vSphere environment includes NSX and clusters configured with vSphere High Availability, after you upgrade to vCenter Server 6.5, both NSX and vSphere High Availability start installing VIBs on all hosts in the clusters. This might cause installation of NSX VIBs on some hosts to fail, and you see the hosts as Not Ready in the NSX UI.
Workaround: Use the NSX UI to reinstall the VIBs.

Error 400 during attempt to log in to vCenter Server from the vSphere Web Client
You log in to vCenter Server from the vSphere Web Client and log out. If, after 8 hours or more, you attempt to log in from the same browser tab, the following error results.400 An Error occurred from SSO. urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:status:Requester, sub status:nullWorkaround: Close the browser or the browser tab and log in again.

Using storage rescan in environments with the large number of LUNs might cause unpredictable problems
Storage rescan is an IO intensive operation. If you run it while performing other datastore management operation, such as creating or extending a datastore, you might experience delays and other problems. Problems are likely to occur in environments with the large number of LUNs, up to 1024, that are supported in the vSphere 6.5 release.Workaround: Typically, storage rescans that your hosts periodically perform are sufficient. You are not required to rescan storage when you perform the general datastore management tasks. Run storage rescans only when absolutely necessary, especially when your deployments include a large set of LUNs.

In vSphere 6.5, the name assigned to the iSCSI software adapter is different from the earlier releases
After you upgrade to the vSphere 6.5 release, the name of the existing software iSCSI adapter, vmhbaXX, changes. This change affects any scripts that use hard-coded values for the name of the adapter. Because VMware does not guarantee that the adapter name remains the same across releases, you should not hard code the name in the scripts. The name change does not affect the behavior of the iSCSI software adapter.Workaround: None.

The bnx2x inbox driver that supports the QLogic NetXtreme II Network/iSCSI/FCoE adapter might cause problems in your ESXi environment
Problems and errors occur when you disable or enable VMkernel ports and change the failover order of NICs for your iSCSI network setup.Workaround: Replace the bnx2x driver with an asynchronous driver. For information, see the VMware Web site.

When you use the Dell lsi_mr3 driver version 6.903.85.00-1OEM.600.0.0.2768847, you might encounter errors
If you use the Dell lsi_mr3 asynchronous driver version 6.903.85.00-1OEM.600.0.0.2768847, the VMkernel logs might display the following message ScsiCore: 1806: Invalid sense buffer.Workaround: Replace the driver with the vSphere 6.5 inbox driver or an asynchronous driver from Broadcom.

Storage I/O Control settings are not honored per VMDK
Storage I/O Control settings are not honored on a per VMDK basis. The VMDK settings are honored at the virtual machine level.Workaround: None.

Cannot create or clone a virtual machine on a SDRS-disabled datastore cluster
This issue occurs when you select a datastore that is part of a SDRS-disabled datastore cluster in any of the New Virtual Machine, Clone Virtual Machine (to virtual machine or to template), or Deploy From Template wizards. When you arrive at the the Ready to Complete page and click Finish, the wizard remains open and nothing appears to occur. The Datastore value status for the virtual machine might display “Getting data…” and does not change.Workaround: Use the vSphere Web Client for placing virtual machines on SDRS-disabled datastore clusters.

These are just a few, that I have singled out…it’s worth reading through all the known issues just in case there are any specific issues that might impact you.

In the next post in this vSphere 6.5 for Service Providers series I will cover, more vCenter features as well as ESXi enhancements and what’s new in Core Storage.

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Earlier this week my good friend Matt Crape sent out a Tweet lamenting the fact that he was having issues uploading media to WordPress…shortly after that tweet went out Matt wasn’t short of Twitter and Slack vCommunity advice (follow the Twitter conversation below) and there where a number of options presented to Matt on how best to host his blogging site Matt That IT Guy.

Oh WordPress – how many times will it take for me to upload a jpg before I don’t get the ‘HTTP Error’ message … * sigh*

Over the years I have seen that same question of “which platform is best” pop up a fair bit and thought it a perfect opportunity to dissect the anatomy of Virtualization is Life!. The answer to the specific question as to which blogging platform is best doesn’t have a wrong or right answer and like most things in life the platform that you use to host your blog is dependent on your own requirements and resources. For me, I’ve always believed in eating my own dog food and I’ve always liked total end to end control of sites that I run. So while, what I’m about to talk about worked for me…you might like to look at alternative options but feel free to borrow on my example as I do feel it gives bloggers full flexibility and control.

Brief History:

Virtualization is Life! started out as Hosting is Life! back in April of 2012 and I choose WordPress at the time mainly due to it’s relatively simple installation and ease of use. The site was hosted on a Windows Hosting Platform that I had built at Anittel, utilizing WebsitePanel on IIS7.5, running FastCGI to serve the PHP content. Server backend was hosted on a VMware ESX Cluster out of the Anittel Sydney Zones. The cost of running this site was approximately $10 US per month.

Tip: At this stage the site was effectively on a shared hosting platform which is a great way to start off as the costs should be low and maintenance and uptime should be included in the hosters SLA.

Migration to Zettagrid:

When I started at Zettagrid, I had a whole new class of virtual infrastructure at my hands and decided to migrate the blog to one of Zettagrid’s Virtual DataCenter products where I provisioned a vCloud Director vDC and created a vApp with a fresh Ubuntu VM inside. The migration from a Windows based system to Linux went smoother than I thought and I only had a few issues with some character maps after restoring the folder structure and database.

The VM it’s self is configured with the following hardware specs:

2 vCPU (5GHz)

4GB vRAM

20GB Storage

As you can see above the actual usage pulled from vCloud Director shows you how little resource a VM with a single WordPress instance uses. That storage number actually represents the expanded size of a thin provisioned disk…actual used on the file system is less than 3GB, and that is with four and a half years and about 290 posts worth of media and database content I’ll go through site optimizations in Part 2, but in reality the amount of resources required to get you started is small…though you have to consider the occasional burst in traffic and work in a buffer as I have done with my VM above.

The cost of running this Virtual Datacenter in Zettagrid is approx $120 US per month.

Tip: Even though I am using a vCloud Director vDC, given the small resource requirements initially needed a VPS or instance based service might be a better bet. Azure/AWS/Google all offer instance based VM instances, but a better bet might be a more boutique provider like DigitalOcean.

Networking and Security:

From a networking point of view I use the vShield/NSX Edge that is part of vCloud Director as my Gateway device. This handles all my DHCP, NAT and Firewall rules and is able to handle the site traffic with ease. If you want to look at what capabilities the vShield/NSX Edges can do, check out my NSX Edge vs vShield Series. Both the basic vShield Edges and NSX Edges have decent Load Balancing features that can be used in high availability situations if required.

As shown below I configured the Gateway rules from the Zettagrid MyAccount Page but could have used the vCloud Director UI. For a WordPress site, the following services should be configured at a minimum.

Web (HTTP)

Secure Web (HTTPS)

FTP (Locked down to only accept connections from specific IPs)

SSH (Locked down to only accept connections from specific IPs)

OS and Web Platform Details:

As mentioned above I choose Ubuntu as my OS of choice to run Wordpress though any Linux flavour would have done the trick. Choosing Linux over Windows obviously means you save on the Microsoft SPLA costs associated with hosting a Windows based OS…the savings should be around $20-$50 US a month right there. A Linux distro is a personal choice so as long as you can install the following modules it doesn’t really matter which one you use.

SSH

PHP

MySQL

Apache

HTOP

The only thing I would suggest is that you use a long term support distro as you don’t want to be stuck on a build that can’t be upgraded or patched to protect against vulnerability and exploits. Essentially I am running a traditional LAMP stack, which is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP built on a minimal install of Ubuntu with only SSH enabled. The upkeep and management of the OS and LAMP stack is not much and I would estimate that I have spent about five to ten hours a year since deploying the original server dealing with updates and maintenance. Apache as a web server still performs well enough for a single blog site, though I know many that made the switch to NGINX and use the LEMP Stack.

The last package on this list is a personal favorite of mine…HTOP is an interactive process viewer for Unix systems that can be installed with a quick apt-get install htop command. As shown below it has a detailed interface and is much better than trying to work through standard top.

Tip: If you don’t want to deal with installing the OS or installing and configuring the LAMP packages, you can download a number of ready made appliances that contain the LAMP stack. Turnkey Linux offers a number of appliances that can be deployed in OVA format and have a ready made LAMP appliance as well as a ready made WordPress appliance.

That covers off the hosting and platform components of this blog…In Part 2 I will go through my WordPress install in a little more detail and look at themes and plugins as well as talk about how best to optimize a blogging site with the help of free caching and geo-distribution platforms.

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This week the VMware vExpert team officially lifted the lid on two new subprograms that focus on NSX and VSAN. The announcements signal a positive move for the vExpert program that had come under some criticism over the past two or so years around the fact that the program had lost some of it’s initial value. As I’ve mentioned previously the program is unmistakably an advocacy program first and foremost and those who are part of the vExpert group should be active contributors in championing VMware technologies as well as being active in their spheres of influence.

Corey and the rest of the team have responded to the calls for change by introducing vExpert Specialties now more in line to what Microsoft does with it’s MVP Program. The first specializations are focused on VMware’s core focus products of NSX and VSAN…these programs are built on the base vExpert program and the group is chosen from existing vExperts who have shown and demonstrated contribution to each technology. The VSAN announcement blog articulates the criteria perfectly.

This group of individuals have passion and enthusiasm for technology, but more importantly, have demonstrated significant activity and evangelism around VSAN.

With that, I am extremely proud to be part of both the inaugural NSX and VSAN vExpert program. It’s some reward and acknowledgment for the content I have created and contributed to for both technologies since their release. Substance is important when it comes to awarding community contribution and as I look through the list I see nothing but substance and quality in the groups.

Again, this is a great move by the vExpert team and I’m looking forward to it reinvigorating the program. I’ve pasted linked below to my core NSX and VSAN content…I’m especially proud of the NSX Bytes series which continues to do well in terms of people still seeking out the content. More recently I have done a bit of work around VSAN and upgrading VSAN from Hybrid to All Flash series was well received. Feel free to browse the content below and look forward to catching up with everyone at VMworld US.

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VMworld 2016 is just around the corner (10 days and counting) and the theme this year is be_Tomorrow …which looks to build on the Ready for Any and Brave IT messages from the last couple of VMworld events. It’s a continuation of VMware’s call to arms to get themselves and their partners and customers prepared for the shift in the IT of tomorrow. This will be my fourth VMworld and I am looking forward to spending time networking with industry peers, walking around the Solutions Exchange on the look out out for the next Rubrik or Platform9 and attending Technical Sessions.

The Content Catalog went live a few weeks ago and the Session Builder has also been live allowing attendees to lock in sessions. There are a total of 817 sessions this year, up from the 752 sessions last year. I’ve listed the main tracks with the numbers fairly similar to last year.

VMware’s core technology focus around VSAN and NSX again has the lions share of sessions this time year, with EUC still a very popular subject. It’s pleasing to see a lot of vCloud Air Network related sessions in the list (for a detailed look at the vCAN Sessions read my previous post) and there is a solid amount of Cloud Native Application content. Below are my top picks for this year:

Multisite Networking and Security with Cross-vCenter NSX: Part 2 [NET7861R]

My focus seems to have shifted back towards more vCloud Director and Network/Hybrid Cloud automation of late and it’s reflected in the choices above. Along side that I am also very interested to see how VMware position vCloud Air after the shambles of the past 12 months and I always I look forward to hearing from respected industry technical leads Frank Denneman, Chris Wahl and Duncan Epping as they give their perspective on storage and software defined datacenters and automation. This year I’m also looking at what the SABU Tech Marketing Team are up to around VSAN and VSAN futures.

As has also become tradition, there are a bunch of bloggers who put out their Top picks for VMworld…check out the links below for more insight into what’s going to be hot in Las Vegas this VMworld. Hope to catch up with as many community folk as possible while over so if you are interested in a chat, hit me up!

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Over the past week there have been a number of posts around the new vSphere Beta which is the first step in testing the next major release from VMware following vSphere 6. As has become custom there is a private beta form that can be accessed here and people that are interested can fill out the form and register their intent to participate.

With all the issues that VMware have experienced over the past 12-18 months it’s massively important (I feel) that this beta is well represented and as many people as possible download the bits and put to the test the new vSphere platform. There is no doubt that this next release will be VMware’s most important when you think about the 5.5 and 6.0 issues as well as the perceived pressure being heaped by Nutanix and…to a less extent Microsoft with Hyper-V.

VMware need to nail .NEXT!

I say this because the one thing that VMware need to combat AHV, Hyper-V and other hypervisors out their is a return to core platform stability and that can be further achieved if there are enough people testing and then reporting back to the VMware beta teams about their issues…the more diverse the beta base is the great the exposure to potential issues and bugs. This isn’t a guarantee that the perception of reduced stability and increased bugs won’t be totally eradicated but it goes some way to helping.

If selected to participate in the beta there are a set of expectations that people need to commit to.

Participant Expectations:

Online acceptance of the Master Software Beta Test Agreement will be required prior to visiting the Private Beta Community

Install beta software within 3 days of receiving access to the beta product

Provide feedback within the first 4 weeks of the beta program

Submit Support Requests for bugs, issues and feature requests

Complete surveys and beta test assignments

Participate in the private beta discussion forum and conference calls

I highlighted the dot point above relating to participants being active when part of a beta program. If you are just wanting to download the bits and install them for a quick look then you are probably not going to get anything substantial out of a beta program. One of the key reasons they exist is to generate feedback and testing on software thats not yet feature set and potentially has undiscovered bugs. Computer game companies have of recent times been putting out open betas (such as the recent one for the new Doom) to put their software through harsh testing at the hands of their potential customer base…this is no different to what betas such as the vSphere Beta.

When I participate in Beta’s I know that I am helping to shape the future of the product…people that know me know that I am a bit of a “beta whore” but that’s only because I understand the benfits of being involved in the programs and understand that it’s not only important for the vendor…but also important for the customer…after all you are getting a look at what’s next and essentially get to contribute in the final release.

vSphere 6 Beta Details:

This program enables participants to help define the direction of the most widely adopted industry-leading virtualization platform. Folks who want to participate in the program can now indicate their interest by filling out this simple form. The vSphere team will grant access to the program to selected candidates in stages. This vSphere Beta Program leverages a private Beta community to download software and share information.

We will provide discussion forums, webinars, and service requests to enable you to share your feedback with us.

You can expect to download, install, and test vSphere Beta software in your environment or get invited to try new features in a VMware hosted environment. All testing is free-form and we encourage you to use our software in ways that interest you. This will provide us with valuable insight into how you use vSphere in real-world conditions and with real-world test cases, enabling us to better align our product with your business needs.

So if you want to contribute to the future of vSphere…register for the BETA and be active in your participation!

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“Best Virtualisation Event Outside of VMworld!” …now there is a big statement if ever there was one! Without insulting every other VMUG UserCon around the world, what I didn’t add to the blog title was “…in the southern hemisphere”. This will be my third Mebourne VMUG UserCon and without disrespecting Sydney’s VMUG UserCon happening a couple of days earlier the Melbourne event is up there when it comes to quality content, quality presenters and community feel.

The last couple of years I have attended the event in Melbourne I have taken away a lot of great technical and non-technical knowledge back home with me and with keynote speakers the likes of no less than Scott Lowe and Keith Townsend together with industry superstar Chris Wahl and other great local presenters I expect the same for the 2016 edition.

The Agenda is jam packed with virtualisation goodness and it’s actually hard to attend everything of interest with schedule conflicts happening throughout the day…my recommended sessions are listed below:

So though I live in Perth and help run the Perth VMUG I believe Melbourne is the true spiritual home of virutalisation in Australia and this UserCon is not to be missed…so if you are in Melbourne next week try and get down to The Crown Casino to participate, learn and contribute and hopefully we can catch up for a drink.

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Last Friday Cory Romero announced the first intake of the 2016 VMware vExperts. As a five time returning vExpert it would be easy for me to sit back enjoy a perceived sense of entitlement that comes with being a vExpert…but times have changed. The award has changed and the way people feel about the program has changed…when I first become a vExpert back in 2012 there was approximately 300 world wide…fast forward to 2016 and there are now 1360 give or take.

Over the past few years there are always comments and questions around the swelling of the numbers and how there should be a more stringent approval and acceptance structure. I myself shared those thoughts in previous posts…however my opinions around this have changed mainly because I have come to understand what the vExpert program (and other vendor programs) are all about and where myself, and VMware can achieve maximum value.

The vExpert program is designed to aid in your success and help amplify your internal and or external personal brands and channels. So whether you are a external evangelist or a internal champion we want to be sure you have the resources needed for the program so you can be more successful. Make no mistake that this program exists to help VMware push it’s products and services through the advocacy of the people in the group. The reward is given to those who in previous 12 months have shown themselves to be active in that advocacy. That doesn’t always mean that you need to be an active blogger or present at events, but it does mean that in your day to day role within the IT Industry you should be championing VMware as a company and break that down to champion VMware products that you use or sell.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t be involved in looking at and advocating other vendor technologies (I am a Veeam VanGaurd and PernixPro as an example) but as Corey mentioned in his email quoted above, the criteria used to have achieved the award implies that those activities need to be VMware focused.

Once you have the title it’s important to understand that there is a responsibility associated with it…it’s not just about the free gear though as I have stated before you should accept that as a perk of being part of the program and you shouldn’t feel like a “vendor whore” for accepting that shirt or coffee mug. Going back to responsibility, what I mean by that is that you should wear the badge proudly…understand that you have taken the time to apply/reapply for the award because you believed yourself worth of filling the selection criteria and use the award as a stepping stone to improve on the activities that got you there the year before.

Don’t rest on your laurels and expect the award to come to you every year…the vExpert team put a lot load of effort into keeping the program running and as a group we get significant exposure and opportunity from VMware and their partners…make it count and don’t waste it! Make sure you engage with others in the community through Twitter, LinkedIn or the Slack vExpert Channel or get down to your local VMUG or VMware event and engage directly.

vExpert On and Advocate!

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Today is a great day for Zettagrid…we have officially released our NSX Advanced Networking feature that extends the networking functionality of our vCloud Based Virtual Datacenter product. The release is as significant as our initial vCloud Director offering which was the first in the ANZ market in offering a fully automated vCloud Power IaaS offering. What makes this release significant is that apart from us being one of the first…if not the first to offer NSX Advanced Edges to act as the gateway for client VMs and services hosted on VMware’s vCloud Director Platform. This first release milestone has further cemented Zettagrid’s status in the cloud market as leaders and innovators when it comes to taking great technology and doing great things with that technology.

While compute has long been the foundation for a strong cloud computing platform that underpins IaaS, networking has always been a bit of a poorer second cousin…not in terms of importance, but in terms of ease of functionality when it comes to automation. Nicira was conceived to overlay physical networks and allow for faster and more efficient setup and configuration driven by an API first mentality…with that it was no surprise that VMware decided to acquire the technology and talent and form the NSBU which has produced NSX for VMware (NSX-v)

Zettagrid saw huge potential in being able to automate the networking deployment, configuration and management of networking to do for networking what vCloud Director had done for compute. There are very specific pain points that this release has solved for Zettagrid customers who where after more functionality and features that where available in the Basic VSE Edge Gateways that come as default with the vCloud Director platform. The alternative prior to NSX Advanced Networking was to deploy a 3rd party Networking appliance and have that connected back to the clients Virtual Datacenter via mainly manual processes which did lead to longer lead times for requests to be completed.

With NSX Advanced Networking clients now have the ability to deploy three sizes of Edge Gateways that cater for all modern Hybrid Cloud requirements. In addition to that all Edges can be deployed with the option of High Availability which offers greater service continuity. Comparing the Basic Networking option to the NSX Advanced features you get a better performing routing and firewall engine along with a significantly improved Load Balancer services that rivals much more expensive options. You also have the ability to take advantage of dynamic routing protocols such as BGP and OSPF to enable more hybrid cloud options connecting vCloud Director Datacenters to on-premises or MPLS networks.

NSX Advanced Networking is deployed from the Zettagrid MyAccount Catalog when ordering a Virtual Datacenter. Within minutes you have access to the MyAccount Portal to start configuring your network and virtual machines. The Zettagrid team worked tirelessly to develop an interface between the NSX Rest APIs and our provisioning backend and then create the MyAccount NSX Advanced Networking UI. We have already begun work on further enhancing the features of the product and will be adding more features and functionality to the MyAccount Portal in future releases.

Networking is the cornerstone of the Hybrid Cloud and with VMware NSX technology, Zettagrid has been able to take a significant first step in making the consumption and management of networking in the cloud more efficient and powerful. Well done to the Zettagrid team on this release and we look forward to our customers taking advantage of the benefits offered by NSX Advanced Networking.

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Yesterday at the long awaited reboot of the Perth VMUG here in Western Australia I chaired a vExpert/vChampion Panel that included Alex Barron, Luke Brown, Luke Dudney and Tim Williams. As a group we collectively felt the community aspect of the VMUGs was missing from the Perth meetings and we pushed hard to replicate other successful VMUGs around the world by having a Community Session as part of the VMUG Agenda.

The idea of the Panel was to try and get the crowd thinking about their own community involvement and the benefits that it can lead to both from a work and personal point of view. We each introduced ourselves, talked about what we did at our day jobs and then talked a little about our experiences on how being part of the VMware community has benefited us since deciding to become more engaged in community activities by embracing programs such as the vExpert and vChampion Programs…Collectively we each acknowledged that we are better off in our careers due to our involvement.

Apart from the technical benefits in being able to bounce ideas and problems off other technically minded people within the community the biggest takeaway I thought was that the people where able to understand that there is more out there than just the four walls of their offices. Sometimes I feel that IT people are stuck in the late 90s or early 2000s when social media was either non existent or prevalent and there was a “lets keep things close to our chest” mentality. The single biggest thing I love about the VMware Community is that there is more often than not a “share first” mentality…I’m not sure why this is so strong in the VMware community but it’s because of this mentality that there is so much content being created and so much online collaboration happening.

With the help of some prompting by @cswaters1 the audience got into the swing of things and began to participate in the panel asking questions around how we got involved with the community among other things…the discussion around blogging was particularly interesting and even a tongue in cheek comment as to my blogging frequency (and the fact I was concocting this very post in my head during the panel) didn’t detract from a key message around blogging.

What advice would you give to others involved in the VMware community who are looking at becoming a vExpert?

For me it’s all about contributing in a positive way towards this great community. If you haven’t started a blog but feel you have something to say then start one. Don’t worry about weather or not you feel your content is worthy of being out in the public, chances are someone, somewhere will find it interesting.

Finding time to tinker in your own home lab or wherever you have access to hardware and software is of massive benefit. Content tends to generate naturally and without effort the more you tinker and play with cool technologies.

#CreateShareContibute

The Create, Share and Contribute message was what we finished up on and after the panel was done the five of us all got great feedback on the sessions and we felt an increased sense of purpose with those who we talked to during the networking food and drinks after the meeting had finished…we even committed to starting a local Perth VMUG Slack Group to help member collaborate.

There are a number of examples where people have used community as a launching pad for their career and used it to change direction and career trajectories…and while that’s another great benefit of getting involved you might find that along the way you may develop some great friendships and become mates with a great bunch of people. So even though I am probably preaching to the converted here…retweet/repost this article and lets try and use community it’s self to get the message across!